


Breaking the Chains

by Ruusverd



Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [24]
Category: Echoes of the Fall - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bronze Age AU, Gen, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26140804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruusverd/pseuds/Ruusverd
Summary: The Kasra's plan is foiled, but before they can celebrate something has to be done to save Geralt. Ciri shouts at a god, because of course she does.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Series: Echoes of the Fall AU [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1863010
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	Breaking the Chains

**Author's Note:**

> tw: mental disintegration, body horror. Geralt's not having a good time right now.

Geralt felt his body spasming but the feeling was distant, as if his body didn’t quite belong to him. Hands turned him over onto his back and he stared blankly at the sky, at faces he only vaguely recognized leaning over him. He heard their voices urging him to Step, begging him to become the wolf so he wouldn’t die in human form. _I want to!_ He shouted at them, dimly aware no words were making it past his mouth. _I’m trying, but I can’_ _t_ _!_

The invisible bindings twisted around them had stopped contracting once the Champion’s form had left him, but they had already grown so tight and the Champion’s soul took up so much space that the other souls inside him were being crushed together, none of them able to separate enough to gain control. He could feel his wolf thrashing around, frantically biting at the net that kept them trapped, but he was unable to Step. He felt like the weight of the Champion was about to shatter him into fragments that could never be pieced back together.

“Get him into the circle!” said a voice that made him think of needle teeth and leather wings, and the smell of medicine, “The Wolf’s Shadow is here, there may still be time to help him!”

“I’m not going in there!” protested a voice that made him think of mad, cackling laughter, though there was no humor in it now. “That circle already sent Old Crocodile running, and the Hyena doesn’t belong to the north, either! I’m not setting even my big toe in there!”

“Let us take him, we can enter safely if anyone can,” came a voice as familiar as his own, a brother. _Help me!_ he tried to shout at that voice, feeling the uncontrolled movements of his body becoming weaker.

“Yes, hurry!” the medicine voice said, “You three take him inside the circle and stay with him. He can’t seem to find his soul, and yours are kin to his. Call it back to him, I’ll guide you from outside!”

He felt more hands lifting him up and carrying him. He wondered absently where they were going. _I trust them,_ he thought, _and I don’t think it much matters now what they do with me in any case._

“You idiot,” the familiar voice said in a worried tone, “We were _right there,_ we weren’t going to let anyone take your pup. Why did you do something so stupid?”

 _I_ _don’t know,_ he thought at the voice , _I don’t even remember what_ _it was that_ _I did._

He caught a brief glimpse of a massive standing stone before he passed through an invisible barrier and suddenly found himself alone at night in a frozen wasteland, cold winds wailing and lashing around him in a fury. He looked up and saw the moving stars of the Godsland, but instead of grassy hills there was nothing but blowing snow. _This is the Wolf,_ he thought nonsensically, _He is the winter and the night_ _and_ _the howling storm,_ _and he’s very angry._

* * *

Ciri wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen now. Once the Kasra had vanished, the souls of the northern gods had drained out of her quickly and they had all wandered off to their own hilltops, not interested in her anymore. Finally only the Wolf was left. She looked up at him quizzically.

“Is that it?” she asked him. The Wolf ignored her, staring straight ahead with his ears pricked as if he were waiting for some signal. “Yennefer?” she tried. “Mama? I found the Wolf, but I don’t know what to do now.”

The Wolf must have heard something she didn’t, because he started trotting quickly in the direction he’d been staring. Ciri panicked briefly before running after him. She wasn’t sure if he’d given her a soul yet or not, and she wasn’t letting him out of her sight until he did. She didn’t feel empty exactly, but she thought perhaps it was only the presence of the Wolf keeping the emptiness at bay. There was no wolf following her the way her lioness and the crocodile had, and she didn’t feel one moving inside her, either.

She followed the Wolf for what felt like a vast distance. The farther they went, the heavier the snow became, until she found herself in an empty, frozen world. She knew they had passed into the Wolf’s own part of the Godsland, and he was still angry. She shuddered, glad his anger wasn’t directed at her.

The Wolf finally came to a stop at the top of a hill, and she stopped beside him. A strange, broken cry came from the valley beneath them, and the voices of several wolves answered it. She slid down the side of the hill and approached the writhing, oddly shifting creature caught in a dark net at the bottom.

* * *

He tried to move, not knowing where he was going or what he was running from. He stumbled and crawled forwards as his form shifted uncontrollably moment to moment between a wolf’s paws, human hands and feet, and a form he didn’t recognize that had no limbs at all. Sometimes he was wearing parts of several forms at once, which felt nauseatingly wrong. He couldn’t remember what had happened to him, only that a trap he couldn’t see was wrapped around him, cramming too many souls into too small a space, and an immense, crushing weight was pressing down on all of them, forcing them to either overlap or splinter into fragments.

 _Find our pack!_ cried the wolf. _Run away_ _!_ the human insisted. _Find a hole in the earth and hide! c_ ried the form with no limbs. The wolf won for a moment, his howls cracking and distorted by the shifting shape of his throat.

He could hear answering howls coming from behind the snow covered hills, and his souls rebelled again at the sound of their voices, torn between running away or turning back towards them. He staggered a few more steps before two of his legs briefly vanished out from under him again, sending him crashing into the snow. The voices inside him continued to scream their contradictory orders, but he didn’t have the strength to obey any of them. The weight was too heavy, he couldn’t carry it any farther.

* * *

“Geralt?” Ciri asked in shock. She wouldn’t have known him if not for his eyes. His form was blurring and shifting between shapes in a nauseating way, but his eyes stayed the same, golden and slit-pupiled. “Geralt, what happened?’ she asked him, “What’s going on? What should I do?”

A flurry of footsteps made her look up, and she saw her uncles running towards them, cringing from the driving winds and looking up at the Wolf anxiously. The cold didn’t seem to bother her, oddly, though she was dressed for an autumn day and not a midnight snowstorm. The Wolves milled around Geralt, sniffing at him and grimacing when he lashed out at them. Ciri jumped to her feet and looked up at the Wolf, still standing and watching from his hilltop.

“Do something!” she demanded. The Wolf gazed at her impassively, and she was abruptly furious at him for standing there and ignoring whatever awful thing was happening to Geralt. “He’s yours, isn’t he? His whole life he’s followed his wolf, and he’s done it better than any of your stupid tribes! _Do something!”_

 _Cut it away,_ the Wolf said.

“What?”

 _The thing my priests did. It is destroying him. Cut it away._ The Wolf stood unmoving, waiting to see what she would do.

“You’re useless!” she yelled at him, and then turned back to Geralt. She wanted her knife, and so she found it in her hand. She grabbed the ropes of the net around Geralt, hacking at it savagely, as Geralt struggled and made horrible, mixed-up noises. His brothers had to pin him down to stop him from snapping at her. It hurt that he would try to bite her, but his unchanging eyes were wide with blank terror and she knew he didn’t recognize her. Finally the ropes snapped and a great burst of released pressure knocked her off her feet.

* * *

The man (was he a man?) who couldn’t remember his name (did he have a name?) looked up as a young girl came out of the storm and knelt next to him. He knew she was important, but he couldn’t remember her name or who she was. He whined/hissed/moaned at her, unable to speak even when his throat was human. She looked horrified, and ran a hand over his fur/scales/skin gently. She spoke to him, but he had lost the ability to understand her.

Three wolves came running up to them, ears flattened and looking around at the storm nervously. For a moment he thought he recognized them, then the thought slipped away. They nosed at him, and he snarled/hissed/screamed at them, trying to drive them away.

The girl, becoming less familiar by the second, came close and a sharp knife suddenly appeared in her hand. His eyes widened and he struggled to get away, but his limbs were too tangled in the invisible net, when he had limbs at all. The three wolves crowded around, pinning him down with their paws as he thrashed and snapped uselessly at them with his shifting jaws. The strange human reached out, but instead of stabbing him she grabbed the ropes that he couldn’t see, sawing at them with the knife, her expression tight with anger and determination.

Finally the tangled strands of the trap parted, and all of the souls caught inside exploded into four separate beings, shaking themselves and trying to get their bearings. For a moment the part that was human felt an all-encompassing emptiness threatening to swallow up everything that was left of him.

He fell to the ground, curling around the aching hole in his chest, but before his despair could consume him the wolf soul came and laid down, pressing itself firmly against his chest. The snake, which must have been the form with no legs, slithered across them and burrowed into the space between the man and the wolf, hiding itself away out of sight once more. The two souls melted back into him, sliding neatly into place without any crowding or crushing. The empty feeling faded and the man breathed a sigh of relief.

The last form, the Champion, stared at him in silence for a few moments, before dipping its head in a slight bow and walking away. The man, who suddenly remembered he was called Geralt, didn’t think the creature had meant to hurt him, but he wasn’t sorry to see it go.

The raging storm began to die down, and Geralt felt himself sliding into sleep. As his eyes started to droop he saw the girl stand up and approach an enormous Wolf, larger and grander than any real wolf and yet somehow insubstantial, as if he were a shadowy reflection of all the wolves, human or mute, who had ever lived all put together into one. She spoke to him briefly, then Stepped to a half-grown wolf with an ashen coat. She turned towards him, wagging her tail and dancing in delight.

“Ciri,” Geralt said, and he smiled.

* * *

Stunned by the explosion, Ciri blinked up at the rapidly moving stars until she was sure it was the stars spinning and not her head. She sat up just in time to see Geralt’s wolf fade from view where it had been pressed against him. She sighed in relief to see he wasn’t shifting to mixed-up shapes anymore.

The Wolf finally came down the hill. He didn’t speak to her again, but she felt an air of satisfaction radiating off of him. She got up and walked over to him, staring up at him fearlessly despite the jaws that were large enough to swallow her whole.

“I don’t know how this is supposed to be done,” she told him, “but I’ve come a very long way and done some very strange things and I’d like my soul now so I can go home.” She reached up to touch his lower jaw, remembering how the Wolves always swore by the Jaws of the Wolf. She felt the Wolf’s amusement as a new soul settled inside her, filling all the empty places the lioness hadn’t quite fit. She Stepped to her new shape, then danced around and chased her own tail, feeling almost giddy. The lingering sense of discomfort that had been plaguing her since the spring faded away.

Geralt looked like he wanted to go to sleep right where he was, but his brothers pawed at him and shoved him with their noses until he Stepped to his wolf with an unhappy growl and pushed himself to his feet. Eskel and Lambert moved to walk on either side of him, using their shoulders to keep him balanced and snapping at him warningly every time he tried to stop or lay down, while Coen walked in front to lead the way.

Ciri had no idea how to get out of the Godsland, but her uncles seemed to know where they were going so she was content to follow them. The elation of her new soul overpowered her worry, and she couldn’t help running in circles around them and kicking up the snow just for the fun of it. She felt like she could run for days without stopping. She saw the Wolf standing and watching them, the last of his angry storm fading away and gradually taking the snow with it.

Ciri wasn’t sure when they reached the edge of the Godsland, only that one minute she was following her uncles across endless hills and the next she was opening human eyes, blinking against the bright sun after the dim starlight of the Godsland. She shaded her eyes with one hand and saw Geralt’s wolf beside her and his brothers in human shape sitting in a loose triangle around him, also blinking against the sun.

Yennefer’s serpent was sliding slowly across the ground towards Geralt while the rest of their warband hovered outside the circle, watching them anxiously. She looked past them and saw more Wolves than she’d ever seen in her life milling around on the island and on the shore, tying up the Crocodile soldiers and fishing some of them out of the quicksand bog that surrounded the island.

A few of the Crocodiles has been left with their hands free, though they wore halters around their necks, and they were loading the Kasra onto a hastily-constructed stretcher. She looked away, something about him making her uneasy even when he was unconscious. Her eyes settled on the ornate blood-red coat and the fierce golden war-mask that lay abandoned on the ground. She couldn’t decide if she felt bad for the Kasra or not. Too much had happened too quickly for her to decide how she felt about any of it. The seemingly endless energy she’d had in the Godsland hadn’t followed her into the real world, and she felt like either bursting into tears or going to sleep.

“Come on, pup.” Coen reached out a hand to her and she startled, not having seen him get up. A Wolf she didn’t know had brought another stretcher and passed it between the stones to Eskel and Lambert. The two of them shifted Geralt’s wolf onto the stretcher, careful not to dislodge Yennefer where she had coiled up tightly on top of him. Ciri let Coen pull her to her feet, then staggered when all the blood rushed from her head. Coen chuckled at her. “Your papa will have my head when he wakes up if I let you fall on your face. You’re getting too big to be carried, but we’ll do it just this once, all right?”

She nodded blearily and let Coen hoist her up on his back. She was asleep almost before they’d passed between the stones and out of the circle.

**Author's Note:**

> I know fanfiction generally refers to Ciri as "cub," because she's the Lion Cub of Cintra, but I like "pup" better in this context. Either is correct for wolves, and it removes any confusion about lion vs wolf cub. Also I just like the sound of it as a nickname better.


End file.
